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Gee, that is concentrated

Dyeing

A number of years ago, perhaps before I went to Kuwait, our MWR crew had a case lot sale on expired products. Among other things, I scored a case of red, green, and blue food coloring. I could still kick myself for not getting the yellow. Each case has six bottles, 16 oz each. I think I paid about $3.00US a case.

Since then, it has been quietly aging in the back of a shrank in the studio. I certainly would not use it for food anymore, but could see no harm in trying it on wool. Afterall, we all know that food coloring stains just about everything. And kool-aid dyes are nothing more than food coloring.

The kilo cone of sock yarn (1,70€ 100gm) came in the other day. At that price, Noah and I decided to experiment. After he wound a skein, we headed to play. Getting the firs skein wet, we poured some blue and some red food coloring over the yarn, then nuked the skein. After rising out the worst of the excess, we ran the skein through the microwave again in another container full of vinger water.

At this point, since the water in the first container still seemed extremely dark, I decided to read the directions on the side of the food dye. Hummm 1/2 tsp to one cup of boiling water + vinegar for dark blue egg dyeing.

Oh, no wonder this looked so dark, we just sort of poured. And it would be an extreme shame to waste that dye. Noah, good kid that he is, wound the second skein. The red obviously had vanished into the sea that was blue. This time we just dropped the skein directly in dry and smushed it down over a few minutes. After the double nuking, the water was completely clear and little crocked off .

So this is what we have:

Not bad at all for messing around. The next time, we will measure a bit more, and see what we get.

Knitting

Progress on the socks, the first Niagara is complete and I am making progress on the second twisted stitch sock.:

Books

The reason that so little knitting has been accomplised today relates to reading hardcover books. Two of them as a matter of fact.

Innocent in Death by J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). It just went on the shelf in the library on Friday and I want to return it tomorrow so that someone else gets the chance to read it.

Edge of Midnight by Charlene Weir. See above for reason that it needed to be finished.

fiber person - knitter, spinner, weaver who spent 33 years being a military officer to fund the above. And home. And family. Sewing and quilting projects are also in the stash.
After living again in Heidelberg after retiring (finally) from the U.S. Army May 2011, we moved to the US ~ Dec 2015. Something about being over 65 and access to health care. It also might have had to do with finding a buyer for our house. Allegedly this will provide me a home base in the same country as our four adult children, all of whom I adore, so that I can drive them totally insane. Considerations of time to knit down the stash…(right, and if you believe that…) and spin and .... There is now actually enough time to do a bit of consulting, editing. Even more amazing - we have only one household again. As long as everyone understands that I still, 40 years into our marriage, don't do kitchens or bathrooms. For that matter, not being a golden retriever, I don't do slippers or newspapers either.
I don’t miss either the military or full-time clinical practice. Limiting my public health/travel med/consulting and lecturing to “when I feel like it” has let me happily spend my pension cruising, stash enhancing (oops), arguing with the DH about where we are going to travel next and book buying.
Life is good!